Customer Reviews

The Non-Existent Manuscript: A Study of the Protocols of the Sages of Zion (Studies in Antisemitism)

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This is an important work--considering what it purports to be. However, it has serious bibliographic defects. For example, it refers to a famous alleged periodical, "Znamya," which allegedly published the earliest or first public edition of the infamous "Protocols of [the Learned Elders of] Zion." It specifies the nine almost consecutive successive days of the month in September (and August--depending on the Calendar used) this daily printed the item--but Cesare G. De Michelis does not bother to specify the year (though he gives it as 1903 elsewhere in the text--can you find it?). It is commonly alleged that the year was 1903. However, I have not been able to find any major academic or scholarly library in the world, whose catalog is available online, which holds a copy, Hardcopy, or Microfilm, of this alleged Newspaper of 1903, called "Znamya," or "Znamia"! Also, there are too many typographical and translation mistakes for my liking, for a scholarly work on such a controversial and historically important subject!

Furthermore, I have only been able to find Catalogued, in said libraries, only Five (5) of the Thirteen (13) alleged Primary Sources in the Russian Language. In fact, Michelis seems to have created a kind of puzzle--a challenge to English-Language scholars: try to figure out what these sources are. I even began to wonder if the author himself has created a kind of Hoax here too, and that at least some of these Thirteen (13) sources themselves do not exist! Do we have here more Fiction--as in Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum"? The author's names of said sources are as follows: K, L, A1, A2, N, B, B3, D, R1, R2, R3, R4, and I. And it is an exciting challenge--worthy of a Sherlock Holmes--to try to (1) decipher the bibliographic reference, and (2) to locate the exact scholarly or academic library catalog reference available on the Web.

Accordingly, because it has quite a few typographical and dating errors, and because the translation, at least, is far from smooth or clear English, I do not give it the highest, Five Star, rating. Nevertheless, I believe it is the most important scholarly work on the notorious plagiarism, briefly known as the "Protocols of Zion" since Norman Cohn's 1967 seminal study of this forgery--"Warrant for Genocide."